All across America, it’s graduation time… and although your $100 Visa Gift Card to your favorite graduate is certainly a nice present, you’ve never met Robert Smith!
Current Events
Robert Smith is an African-American billionaire who was invited to serve as commencement speaker for the 2019 graduating class of the predominately black Morehouse College in Atlanta. Although students were poised to hear words of wisdom a successful black billionaire could offer them, they had no idea Smith came bearing more than just words.
“On behalf of the 8 generations of my family who have been in this country, we’re going to put a little fuel in your bus,” Robert Smith told the new graduates. He then announced that he was creating a grant to completely eliminate all of their student debt. Or, in other words, each 2019 graduate would have all student loans for their 4-year education totally paid in full and would be entering their professional lives completely debt free.
Needless to say, Smith’s announcement was met with tears of joy, a standing ovation, and chants of “MVP!”
“We’re looking at each other like, ‘Is he being serious?’ That’s a lot of money,” salutatorian Robert James, 21, said following the shocking gift announcement.
Jonathan Epps, 22, who was graduating with roughly $35,000 in student loan debt, said he still couldn’t fully grasp the magnitude of the “tremendous blessing,” adding that it was the kindest, most generous thing he’d ever witnessed.
“It’ll sink in as the years go on. I know that for a fact,” Epps said. “I still don’t really have words. … It makes a great day just that much better.”
As the first of 9 kids to graduate college, Elijah Nesly Dormeus was overcome with emotion by Smith’s actions. His father died when he was 5, so his mother made many personal sacrifices and worked minimum-wage jobs just to provide for him and his siblings.
When the 22-year-old business administration graduate heard Robert Smith announce his unbelievably generous gift, he dropped his head into his hands and cried, then jumped up and whooped and yelled with the others. Dormeus had amassed just over $100,000 in outstanding student loans that would now be paid for. The gift will not only help him but will allow him to help his mother and his 8 siblings as well.
“I was struggling for four years straight. Now look at it. God has smiled on me,” Dormeous said. “I want to pay it back in ways we haven’t yet seen,” he added. “Robert Smith has done that. He’s set the tone.”
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@RFS_Vista May have broken the Internet with his generosity and charge to pay it forward. https://t.co/6dsfw2kToi
— Morehouse College (@Morehouse) May 19, 2019
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Morehouse College President David A. Thomas said school officials are currently tallying up the amount of Smith’s gift, however, they estimate the final sum to be around $40 million dollars.
“Now, I know my class will make sure they pay this forward,” Smith told the graduates. “I want my class to look at these (alumni) — these beautiful Morehouse brothers — and let’s make sure every class has the same opportunity going forward because we are enough to take care of our own community. We are enough to ensure we have all the opportunities of the American dream.”
Bravo, Robert Smith. You just changed some lives and now, you’ve planted the seeds for them to one day change lives too!
Bravo, Robert Smith. You just changed some lives and now, you’ve planted the seeds for them to one day change lives too! […]-DJ
Hear! Hear! What an incredible act of charitable giving that will no doubt have a profound impact not on the lives of those graduates who are direct beneficiaries of such a gift…but indeed also the lives of many more people who are (or will be) touched by those graduates.
My first thought when I first heard about this- Outstanding!
Thanks for posting about it DJ.
Btw- Just a little background history on Mr. Smith.
“5 things to know about Robert F. Smith, Morehouse donor to pay off Class of 2019’s student loans”
Excerpts:
[Smith, who grew up in Denver, developed an interest in the tech field in high school. When he was a junior, he landed an internship at Bell Labs by calling the company every week for five months until he got a position, according to The Washington Post. During his summer and Christmas breaks, he worked on computers.
Smith earned his degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University, where he became a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. He later snagged his master of business administration degree from Columbia Business School in 1994.
The investor, who now lives in Austin, is the nation’s richest black man, according to Forbes. He’s worth approximately $5 billion. The 56-year-old made his fortune through the private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, which he founded in 2000. According to the company’s website, Vista currently manages equity capital commitments of more than $46 billion and oversees a portfolio of more than 50 software companies
Before launching Vista, he worked an investment banking job at Goldman Sachs for several years, where he worked on tech mergers and acquisitions for brands such as Apple, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, eBay and Yahoo. ] – Atlanta Journal Constitution, May 20, 2019
Hey Truth thanks for laying this out for us. I did not know about this guy until now.
Now this is what it is all about. Black folk taking care of black folk. He did not have to do this but like DJ said he changed lives. I hope these students do pay it forward and never forget how they got a helping hand.